


The Family

by BlueSkies (NataliaRusakov), NataliaRusakov



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Shelby Brood
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-01-31 06:29:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21441739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NataliaRusakov/pseuds/BlueSkies, https://archiveofourown.org/users/NataliaRusakov/pseuds/NataliaRusakov
Summary: Thomas Shelby built a legacy - an enterprise and company that endured long past his living memory. England belongs to the Shelby family now.It's time to expand.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 13





	1. Prologue

The office still smelled of fresh paint, and disturbed dust. 

Priya hadn’t ordered the disinfection of her predecessor’s office, but she appreciated the sentiment, and the practicality thereof. His reputation hadn’t so much preceded him as found itself splashed across the front page of the Times in gory detail on particularly fraught Monday some weeks ago, resulting in a prompt resignation from Cabinet, and his constituency. He’d fled into the safety of the City, where the pointed fingers were replaced by more friendly shoulder pats, leaving the Prime Minister to mop up the eggs being hurled from the Opposition benches.

Still. His inability to keep his trousers zipped had propelled Priya from junior ministry in a marginal seat to the youngest Home Secretary in several decades. The Telegraph had commended her appointment, while the Evening Standard had sneered at it. Comments about her heritage, her divorce, her ambition, and her career were all par for the course, and Priya was well versed in them by now. She had plans, and they went all the way to the top. Her appointment had been a shock, but a welcome one. 

The bouquet she’d received into her office on her second day had been the perfect opportunity to flex her new position - try it on for size, if you would. She was the new Order - unencumbered by the old rules. The Standard could sneer all it wished - she’d have the rest of them lauding her refusal to accept the handshakes meted out by those milky eyed clods in the corridors and setting a new path in those staid chambers. 

Her first battle had been with her own permanent private secretary. When she’d issued him with the order to summon today’s visitor to her offices, he’d visibly balked. For a man who’d been in situ since Priya was in utero, who’d weathered countless crises that had toppled majority governments, the sight of Sir Richard’s grey face blanching a sickly shade of green was rather exciting. Her first step in stirring up the pot. 

“Minister…” he’d begun, in that monotonous, droning voice that was in equal parts insufferable, patronising, and soporific. “...I really do not think it appropriate to summon a Shelby representative to your office.” 

“Sir Richard,” Priya said, tartly, “Might I suggest leaving my optics to my polsec, and simply following my instructions?” 

Sir Richard’s lips had thinned, and Priya had marched back into her office. Decisive and confident. Perfect. 

*

Every shred of that confidence had vanished when her PA had knocked on her door at precisely eleven the following day. It had been encouraging at first. Clearly the Shelby lackey had no silly notions about making ministers wait. She’d have soon disavowed them of that idiocy if they had. 

Priya had straightened her itchy new skirt, but remained in her seat. She’d have the fellow remain standing, squirming under her gaze - just as the Queen had done to her two weeks ago. 

It was a new era, and the members of criminal cartels of London were no different to the aides who scuttled before her. They would need to understand that their enterprises would be coming to an end under her premiership… ministerial appointment. 

Despite all of her assertion, the wind was sucked out of Priya’s sails as soon as the Shelby representative walked through the office door. 

It wasn’t a lackey. It was two women - clearly sisters. Priya had read the Special Branch file that she’d had to pry out of Sir Richard’s hands, and knew exactly who they were. 

The first was tall, made taller by the exquisitely tailored coat belted at her long waist, her neck made longer by the sweep of her dark hair into a coiled bun. Her shoes were neat and obscenely expensive, and her gloved hands were empty, save for a sleek black phone. Carolyn Shelby did not bother with the useless, and the expense and cumber of handbags was unnecessary for a woman permanently surrounded by unfortunate employees to carry it for her. Her sister was an inch smaller, but her clothing no less expensive, if slightly more utilitarian. Lucy was a solicitor, a senior partner at a prestigious firm that boasted one single, all-encompassing corporate client. To be fair, the other partners at the firm were mere props to give the illusion that Lucy didn’t call the shots at the firm that existed exclusively to represent her family business. Priya had read the pages about the SRA’s attempted investigation into Lucy’s firm, that had culminated in an unpleasant outcome involving a minor national scandal for the scrappy investigator who had tried to take her on. Foolish idiot, Priya had scoffed. One needed ministerial power, and the ear of the PM to go toe to toe with the Shelbys. 

Without invitation, the elder dragged the chair from Priya’s desk and sat. Her sister followed in unison, a fluid, unrehearsed show of intimidation. Priya bristled. 

“Ms. Winter.” Carolyn smiled, a cat’s sneer. 

“Minister.” Priya corrected, and the smile widened. 

“I think not. We have been summoned, without notice, or indication of intent, My sister and I indulged you on this occasion. I would suggest that you get to the point.” 

“I asked for this meeting, and I issued strict instructions that it was to be Mr. Shelby who attended this office to account for his ridiculous stunt with the flowers.”

Lucy inclined her head, but it was Carolyn who spoke. 

“I will speak for my brother when I express his hurt that you would interpret his thoughtfulness as a stunt.” Her teeth flashed as she enunciated the last word as though it were distasteful. “Our family has enjoyed the professional courtesy of your predecessors, and wished to extend the hand of the same to you.”

“Then I’m afraid that your brother will be disappointed. I don’t keep the company of petty criminals, nor their hands in my pockets. He may also find that my department will no longer tolerate his dealings, nor will they turn a blind eye to the enterprises that my predecessor failed to address.” Priya offered her own attempt at the cat’s smile. “Thank you for coming Carolyn, and a pleasure to meet your dear little sister.” 

Lucy smiled heartily at that, and picked up her folio to withdraw a single glossy print photograph with a business card clipped to the corner, and slid it, face down, across the desk to Priya. 

“My client siblings would like to extend their warmest congratulations on your appointment, and look forward to a productive relationship that may be mutually beneficial to all parties. Please address any further correspondence to my firm who will arrange any contact with your department. I’m sure you will appreciate that we don’t believe it will be necessary.” 

Priya made no move towards the document, and Carolyn stood.

“We’ll say goodnight before poor Sir Richard pulls out his remaining hair. A pleasure, Ms. Winter.”

The sisters left, with no further fanfare than the sound of their heels clicking down the corridor. 

With a trembling hand, Priya turned over the photograph, and vomited into the recycling bin.


	2. Lucy, Sans Diamonds

They were halfway to Southwark before the silence inside the car was broken. 

“You know, if you strongarm me into an intimidation with the Home Secretary, I do need a little notice.” Lucy’s voice was cool as she typed out an email, jiggling her shoe loosely on her big toe. Carolyn had kicked her own onto the floor and tucked her feet underneath her bottom, resting her aching head on the cool glass of the window. “Barely had time to get my hair dry, let alone those photographs.”

“Photographs?” Carolyn mused, with faint interest. 

“She knows they’re part of a series. Hopefully Richard will be able to shoo her into line now she’s had a shock. Ministers are so expensive to do, it would be such a ballache for two in the same month.” She looked up, and met her sister’s eyes. “We need to talk about the ship, Caro.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s a clusterfuck.”

“It was a tactical decision that had to be made quickly.”

“You sank a container ship in the South China Sea. That’s not tactical, that’s a declaration of war.”

“The die was cast in Changi. We had to move quickly or they would have taken the carpet out from under us.”

Lucy flattened her lips, and swallowed whatever she’d been about to say with a look of bitter disgust. The words that she did allow were clipped and careful, her lawyer voice filtering the visceral anger. 

“You will need to convene the Board. Whatever we do next needs to be thought out carefully. The triads are on the back foot, and the shipment tied up their cashflow - but it won’t be for long. I presume you took precautions?”

“The investigation will declare it a fault on the ship’s systems. Failure of a pressure valve in the chamber causing a minor explosion that perforated the hull and caused catastrophic ingress of water.” Caro recited dully. 

“Witnesses?”

“All hands went down.” 

“Along with the human cargo from Shengzheng,” Lucy’s voice had pitched higher and Caro recognised the crux of the issue. 

“Crossfire is an inevitable eventually.” It hadn’t been an easy call for Caro, but she’d made it. Alone, in the full knowledge that she would have been vetoed if she’d asked her siblings. 

“There’s crossfire, and then there is deliberately sinking a ship with humans imprisoned on board.”

“The risk…” Caro began, arguing the same point she’d made to herself, but Lucy cut in before she could begin those moralisations.

“The risk of being smuggled into Europe is something they would have considered. Having their ship blown up with military ordnance was not anywhere on that list of consideration.”

“They threw their lot in with a triad. They didn’t mistake it for the Red Cross.”

“Fine.” Lucy’s ‘fine’ had been honed in childhood, and was a remarkable vocal weapon that could simultaneously end an argument and promise a much bigger one later. “It’s done. We just need to ensure that the fallout from that doesn’t endanger any of our other dealings. Is Tommy on his way home?” 

“He’ll land at City at five.” 

“Then convene the meeting for seven.” 

“He can come straight from the plane.”

“He can. I have to go and knock some sense into his daughter because God knows he won’t.”

*

This was not the first time that the headmistress of Hampstead Lycée had faced off with this particular pupil. 

Elizabeth Shelby was a force unto herself, and despite single handedly boosting the school a league point with her spotless grades - when she could be deigned to take them, was the most irascible and intransigent student ever admitted. Rich as Croesus, but wild as the moorland hills, Polly spent most of her time smoking in uniform, causing trouble, or enticing more sheltered students into her mischief. She’d have been expelled five or six times over but for her aunt’s appreciation of a well thought out donation to the school’s charitable fund in an unrelated but well-timed transaction. She’d not yet set eyes on the girl’s father and sole parent, a position that she wondered that she shared with the girl herself. Her aunt was an agreeable woman, but it was clear that she was as crooked as the rest of them, City lawyer or not.

Polly had curled up on the seat, arms folded, eyes down. She looked for all the world as if asleep, but her eyes flickered at the sounds of a netball game outside. 

Perhaps that was the other enigma of her. For all her antics, she’d yet to make a proper friend in the three years she’d been at the school. She could play the piper with the impressionable ones, and she’d happily scrap with the ones foolish enough to bully her, but she’d never had a true confidante.

At noon, Lucy Shelby swept into the office on a cloud of expensive scent. She shook the headmistress’ hand, and nodded her apologies in the usual way, and then stood, quite out of the usual routine. 

“I do thank you Mrs. Gower, for looking after Polly so well for her time here. However, given her recent struggles, my brother and I think it more appropriate that we find an alternative situation for her to complete her education.” 

Mrs Gower perked and wilted in the same moment. One the one hand, she’d had quite enough consoling teachers and students who had fallen foul of Polly’s antics. One the other, the school would miss the swelling of the coffers that had paid for an excellent staff training day at a country spa. 

“I must arrange an appropriate thank you gift for Polly’s teachers. Do remind my secretary when she calls to ask for Polly’s educational reference.” 

Well that was encouraging. 

Polly picked up her bag and trailed trom the room behind her aunt, not casting a single look back. 

‘Luce…’ Polly began, but the look her aunt sent her would have dissolved steel. 

‘In the car,’ Lucy gritted out through a tense jaw, her car keys gripped in her hand. Polly’s stomach landed in her shoes. Lucy only drove when she didn’t want witnesses - drivers bound by airtight non-disclosure agreements included. 

Lucy’s Mercedes was parked on the double yellows outside the school. A traffic warden was on approach, but Lucy had hurled Polly into the back seat and roared out into the mercifully clear road just as he stretched out an officious hand in a pathetic attempt to stop her. 

Polly decided to chance it. ‘Where are we going?’ 

‘Pol, this morning, before it even had the decency of daylight, the earth was falling down around my ears.’ Lucy’s eyes flicked up to meet her niece’s in the rear view mirror, and Pol was startled by their evident worry. Lucy was unflappable, cucumber-cool in any and all situation, including the time that Polly had set fire to the old school gym. ‘Multiple colossal fuck ups, all of which I have had to plow through and mop up. Do you think, in the grand scheme of things, that I really need to be dealing with you?’ 

That stung. Lucy had been the only mother Polly had ever known. Houses were not in short supply for a Shelby, and nor were staff. Polly could have been deposited in a nice country estate with a retinue of nannies to attend to her every whim, and Lucy need not have troubled herself further, save for the monthly bill. But she hadn’t. Polly lived with Lucy in Holland Park, in the closest approximation to a proper family unit they could get. But there were times, like now, when Lucy was acting very much as a mother would if her eleven year old daughter had been the one who had been the cause of this morning’s debacle, but every flicker in her voice reminded Polly that this was very much not Lucy’s problem. 

Lucy must have seen the hard swallow in Polly’s throat, and she softened her voice and dropped her gaze back to the road. 

‘Come up here.’ Polly needed no further invitation. She clambered up and through the centre console, and plopped down on the leather seat. Sensing that this was not the time to say a fucking thing, Polly cast her own eyes forward. They were eastbound on the North Circular, which could only mean that they were heading for the office, rather than home. That was positive. There would be witnesses at the office. None who’d intervene, but witnesses all the same. 

‘Why?’ Lucy’s voice was more curious than foreboding, which Polly took positively but decided to play dumb a little longer - test the waters first. 

‘Huh?’ 

‘Why’d you do it? Seems a lot of effort for very little show.’ 

‘Wasn’t about show,’ Polly mumbled. ‘Was about retribution.’ 

Lucy couldn’t help the snort at that. ‘Pol…’ 

‘I was sick of her stupid face and her mouth saying all of that so…’ 

‘Who?’

‘Georgia Kendrick.’ 

Lucy scrunched her nose as she flicked back through the mental cabinet of screaming parents whose protests had cost her so much in donations to the school’s charitable fund. Still, at least the senior management team had been dozy enough in their embezzlement of funds to hold their spa day, and boozy dinner, at a Shelby owned hotel, so she’d scratched a fair old bit back. ‘The one who had me dragged in last month for the lunchbox thing?’ 

‘Yea.’ 

‘Pol, she doesn’t matter.’ 

‘You didn’t go to school with people like her, you wouldn’t know.’ Polly knew she was whining now, but in the spirit of Lucy being almost sentimental despite the fact that she’d set off what amounted to a minor explosive inside a school, Polly decided to push it. 

‘No, I didn’t.’ Lucy said, and there was a darker note in her tone that wilted Polly back into her seat. ‘I wasn’t given the option.’ 

‘Yeah, but you knew you’d be working for the family.’ 

Lucy braked for traffic, and glanced at her niece, with a look of such utter stillness that Polly was frozen in place. 

‘Some days, Polly Shelby, I do wonder if any of this gets through to you. You don’t know you’re born, and one day, you’re going to regret that.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That was fun. I’ve had this story floating around for a couple of months now, but I couldn’t quite nail it down to a coherent storyline until I put it into the Peaky-verse. 
> 
> Well, sort of. 
> 
> Anyway, let’s see where this goes. This is the most productive I’ve been in months so clearly it’s got the old brain juices flowing, I’m quite excited to see where it takes us.


	3. Tommy

Most days, Lucy could deal with the daily headaches she was handed by members of her extended family. Nobody could call them unimaginative in their dealings. 

Shelby Ltd, and the multiple associated partnerships, charitable trusts, limited companies, SPVs, shell companies, LLPs, a PO Box in Guernsey, and two very dodgy S.A.R.Ls in Monaco had not so much fingers in pies, as an industrial factory outfit in automated pie-fingering. Shelbys bred like rabbits, and most wanted a slice, so the company had grown to encompass most major areas of legitimate, and considerably less legitimate, revenue generation with each successive generation. 

However, the trouble with a family business, particularly one founded on such an innovation, was that the ones running it were family, and consequently the board meetings were as volatile as a wedding, replete with drunken uncles scrapping in the corner. 

Carolyn had excused herself to the balcony outside the boardroom for a smoke. The ash trays were laid out, and smoke was curling up towards the ceiling, so Lucy suspected that Carolyn had had as much as she had with Georgie and old Uncle Kenneth going at it as she could bear. Michael had stood to give a speech on the import of uncut fentanyl through Liverpool, but Johnny had heckled him to the point that Michael had hurled a whisky glass at Johnny’s head. They might have descended into as vicious an argument as their uncles, but Lucy had shot them such a look of unadulterated venom that they’d quietened to glower at each other from opposite ends of the table. 

It was closer to eight when the doors opened, and the man himself, unruffled despite his eleven hour quick trot back from Singapore, strode into the room. Lucy said nothing, but the room quietened to a pin drop silence as he took his seat at the head of the table. Carolyn cast a quick glance over her shoulder, but remained outside, gazing out onto the skyline of the Docklands. Her brother spared her the briefest glance, and thumped his folio onto the table. 

‘Right.’ Tommy and Lucy had arranged their party line over email, but it had been unnecessary. Family always, and first. Whatever Carolyn had done, regardless of how they felt about it, the First Siblings would close ranks and stand together. ‘We’ve had some very positive feedback from the events of last Thursday. The Red Hand triad is crippled in cash-flow, and they’re scrabbling to pay their debts.’

Johnny raised a hand, and Tommy offered a nod. 

‘We’ve been approached by couriers in Belgium who need new product now that the Rising Dawn is at the bottom of the sea.’

‘Heroin?’ Michael asked, bristling. Heroin was Michael’s thing, as he never hesitated to remind them. 

‘They’ll carry anything, but they can’t stay around the ports in Bruges for too long, and they have to dump the containers within a couple of weeks. They’re losing money by the second without shipments.’

‘What’s their capacity?’ Tommy asked, interest piqued. Lucy sighed. Her brother had the brain of a dozen intelligent men. He could have made billions on the stock market, transactions that were easily laundered and were easy for her to dress up as legitimate transactions. But a large part of him was a slave to his heritage, and he could never resist small fry petty crime. 

Well, drug smuggling by the tonnage was small fry to a Shelby. 

‘Boys,’ Lucy interjected. ‘While I appreciate a new direction discussion, may I suggest we save this for the usual meetings?’

Tommy’s eyes met his sister’s, and their unspoken agreement passed between them like water. 

‘Well, another time. In the meantime, the Red Hand is down, but not out. They have an established trafficking network, and they’ll scratch back a fair amount of cash-flow through their dealings in the UK. I propose that we capitalise on this, and move in.’

‘On nail salons?’ Michael’s voice was incredulous, but Kenneth was nodding approvingly at Tommy’s suggestion, and it was he who answered.

‘Cash businesses. The girls do nails by the day, and by night, whatever the bosses want of them,’ he explained. Kenneth was old school, but he was diligent about looking into all the new-fangled ideas that the rivals dreamt up, and he was encyclopaedic about this sort of thing. ‘Its for money laundering, so most of them don’t bother with the legitimate banks and keep it under the floorboards. Then it gets smuggled to Hong Kong, laundered into local currency, and back into their coffers.’ He rubbed his hands together at this unusually eloquent speech of his, and grinned at Tommy. ‘I’ve been wanting to get in on this for years.’ 

‘You think you can rustle up a decent event?’ Tommy asked, leaning over the conference table towards him. 

‘I should think so,’ Kenneth pondered. ‘How many cities d’you want me to do?’ 

‘You’re the expert Uncle. How many can you do?’

Lucy shifted uncomfortably. Another Shelby genetic trait. An uncanny ability to bite off more than one could chew, a trait no longer isolated in the Y chromosome it would seem. 

‘Frankie, my boy,’ Kenneth turned to his youngest nephew who perked up at the mention of his name. ‘What’s that gang of your numbering these days?’ 

‘Couple of thou,’ Frankie called back. ‘They’re not smart though.’

‘Don’t need brains. Just need weapons and brawn.’ 

‘How many cities?’ Tommy repeated.

‘Big six, I reckon.’ Kenneth offered, and Frankie nodded his agreement. ‘Concentrating on Manchester and London will be the biggest yields, but Birmingham would be alright as well.’

‘Leave Birmingham for now. That’s our ends, the Red Hand aren’t strong there, and they’ll know not to put a foot out unless they want the old boys coming down on them.’ 

‘Alrighty. We’ll do Glasgow instead of Birmingham.’ Kenneth was a known face in Glasgow, and Lucy knew he had scores to settle that had nothing to do with the triad. 

‘When can you have this fixed?’ Tommy asked.

‘A week?’ 

‘When can you have this fixed and watertight?’ Lucy corrected. ‘This is a gamble, we can’t have it going wrong.’

‘We’re not using our own boys - they won’t tie it back to us,’ Frankie began, in an attempt to reassure. 

‘We’re hitting six major cities at once and going for the same target with the same gang.' Lucy tapped the table as she looked between her cousin and uncle. 'We might have kept our connections to them a secret up to now, but even the NCA can pull its head out of its arse for five minutes and work our that those logistics are being run by someone who knows what they’re doing.'

‘Ten days,’ Kenneth compromised. ‘They won’t get a shipment together before then and they won’t have had time to move the money. That gives us time to get into position and smack em once and hard.’

Tommy nodded. 

‘Good. Do it.’ 

Kenneth and Frankie, knowing the dismissal tone of voice as well as a dog knows the sound of a lead rattling, left the meeting with wide smiles, muttering strategies as they went.

Tommy turned to face the remaining board.

‘Ten years ago, we met on the event of my father’s untimely demise. We set out the strategy, and aims of this new Board. For all our hard work in these years since, Shelby Company Ltd is the most powerful business in England. I’ll say that either not an ounce of humility. We are.

‘We are all descendants of Birmingham men who saw their lot in life and told it to go fuck itself. Their beginning has led to us here, in our own fuckin’ skyscraper, with houses in the country and jets on the runway at the airport, ready to fly us round the world to our new global concerns. 

‘Part of those global concerns includes no longer running errands for those who want to use us to smuggle their produce into this country, or out of it. We’re not the shopkeepers of England, importing opium and moonshine and whatever the fuck else we used to get on the old barges in the Birmingham canals. Those days are done. 

‘Shelby Company Ltd is moving into the market for itself, and will do so until we are the market. We will take what we know and we will make it bigger. We fixed horse races in the beginning. Now we own betting companies. Now, we’ll fix the stock market to our advantage. Jerry - how’s that little import-export business going in Liverpool?’ 

Jerry, startled by his inclusion in Tommy’s speech, nodded. 

‘Unloading those ships of that nice cargo from Colombia is a lovely little money spinner. Let’s own every ship that comes out of South America. Let’s own the coca fields. 

‘The point I am making is that England is ours. It is the island on which we struck our claim to our name, and became who we are. Now, it is time for that name to be known beyond these shores, and for us to move into another decade, bigger, and better than ever before.’ 

Michael, ever the sycophant, applauded. Carolyn, who had wandered into the room partway through his speech nodded approvingly, and joined in with slow, careful claps until the rest of the extended family were also voicing their assent. 

Lucy’s glare could have sliced him in half. 

*


	4. The Skyline

“One of these days, Thomas, someone is going to punch you, very hard, square in the face. That day is probably today, and that person is most definitely going to be me,’ They’d retired to Tommy’s office after the meeting, Lucy marching ahead with her fists screwed up into balls and fairly shaking with rage. Tommy looked up at his sister, and held her furious gaze with not a blink. 

‘You’ve known this was coming for a while Luce. Did you think it was the weather keeping Caro and I in Singapore?’ 

‘I suggest Thomas, in light of my previous statement, you do not fucking start,’ Lucy’s jabbing finger was in his face, and Thomas knew it would be jammed against his larynx in the next five seconds, possibly wrapped around his antique letter opener, if he opened his mouth again. Caro was next in Lucy’s firing line as she rounded on her, ripping her cigarette out of her hand and crushing it, still lit, on Tommy’s glass desk. ‘And if you tell me that the Rising Dawn was the beginning of all of this, and I wasn’t informed ahead of time, there is not a place on Earth for you to hide.’ 

‘Be fairly pointless at this stage, wouldn’t it?’ Carolyn’s insouciance was wildly misjudged, and fifteen years earlier, Caro might have found herself on the plush carpet with Lucy’s hands around her neck. Lucy was a scrapper, and a good fighter, so it was an odder thing to watch - her cooling herself down but taking a few measured breaths with closed eyes. 

‘Tell me the truth. Did you know?’ Her eyes found Tommy’s, and he considered her for a second, and shook his head. 

‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘But it was a good strategy, Brought the expansion plan a little further ahead than expected, but it wasn’t the wrong call to make.’ 

Lucy looked between her siblings - hurt, betrayal, anger, and finally resignation flickering across her face. 

‘As I appear to have been outvoted on a decision I wasn’t privy to in the first place, I suggest that you two put your heads together and provide this great expansion plan to me so that I can pick holes in it to maybe - just maybe - ensure that you both survive it.’

Chastened. Tommy nodded, and Caro put a gentle hand on Lucy’s arm. 

‘It wasn’t deliberate. I had to make a decision in a matter of minutes. There wasn’t time. Not even for Tommy.’ 

Lucy shook her hand off. ‘Plan. On my desk by Wednesday, and I want it hand delivered by one of you.’ 

Carolyn stood, and buttoned her coat. ‘Wednesday at nine. We’ll hash it out properly, like we used to.’ She glanced at her brother, as if about to say something else, and thought better of it. ‘I’ll say goodnight. Luce, can I say goodnight to Pol or is she in too much disgrace?’ 

Lucy’s lips flickered in what might have been a shadow of a smile. ‘You can, but you are not to congratulate her in any way, manner, or form. That school has cost me a fucking fortune.’ 

‘I’d consider it money well spent. No doubting her bloodline, is there?’ 

Lucy waited until the door had closed behind her, before closing her eyes and pinching the bridge of her nose as she collapsed into Caro’s vacant chair. 

‘You are all out to push me into an early grave. The fuckin’ lot of yous.’ 

‘None more so than me and mine, eh?’ Tommy uncapped his whisky decanter, and poured out two hearty measures. 

‘She will kill me long before Henry Gray ever gets near us.’ 

‘He’s still causing trouble?’ Tommy asked, joviality gone.

‘Not really,’ Lucy replied, knocking back her glass and tilting it for another. ‘He sends the odd bit of trouble every now and again, but its basic play. I have the paralegals deal with it - it’s not fucking rocket science.’ 

‘No physical trouble?’ Tommy poured Lucy another measure, and then lit a cigarette in a long draw that visibly relaxed him. 

‘Not since Finn and Robert went to New York and reminded him of his place. Would you believe they invoiced the firm for the jet - on a jolly like that?’ 

‘It was company business.’ 

‘It was Christmas for those two - you know what they’re like about a fight.’ 

‘If Grandpa could see us now - private jets to a good old football scrap,’ Tommy grinned, the warmth back in his voice. ‘Now. Tell me what the fuck Polly has done now, so I can laugh where she can’t see me.’ 

‘You have got to have a deadly serious face on when you tell her off. I can’t have her repeating this at the next school, I’d not get another to take her.’ 

‘Fine.’

'So, the school called me, screaming...'


	5. Puzzle Pieces

Polly barely glanced up as Lucy’s office door opened. 

She’d been planted on this chair at one in the afternoon, and told to remain in it on pain of death, or worse, Lucy. 

It wasn’t such a bad lot. Her aunt’s papers were always interesting to flick through, and her annotations - usually colourful descriptions of whichever family member had brought her wrath that week were a good sideshow to Polly’s understanding of the family business. 

It was odd, really. Here was Lucy, diligent to the point of obsessive with Polly having a normal life - or as normal as a Shelby could get. Polly had endured three different, and expensive, schools, six years of ballet lessons, piano tuition- even fucking Brownies for one ill advised month; all while Lucy was reminding her that it was important that she have a normal life. Yet her aunt was perfectly happy to leave her, unattended, in a room full of documents about her family’s criminal enterprises. 

Granted, it was in coded language, but it wasn’t exactly difficult to pick apart ‘hostile acquisition of business assets’ as a half-arsed attempt to dress up armed robbery in a nice suit. And Christ, it wasn’t as if they tried to keep it from her at any other time. Last Christmas, Uncle Kenny had whacked out a stinking great model of the factory in Gateshead they’d been casing - lovingly crafted out of lolly sticks. It was a work of fucking art, and his eyes had lit up as he had explained to Polly, in great detail, about how they intended to liberate the factory of a vast quantity of unprocessed copper. He and Uncle George had had a bust up about the acquisition costs versus scrap value of it while they were carving up the turkey - so it wasn’t like Lucy was keeping to the normality party line at any other point than putting on a show of her outside the house.

She knew who ran what, out of where, and what each new endeavour had earned the family’s offshore trusts. She could name the London and Birmingham teenage gangs that Frankie controlled, playing them off one another in competition for a pathetically small market share of the product that Michael and Jeremy smuggled in through the ports, and ensuring that all the profits were eventually tucked back into Shelby pockets. 

The only thing that the Shelbys did not run were people. Human trafficking, Finn had once explained to her, was the preserve of soulless unhumans. Enslaving another person - he’d said, spitting his distate into a bush in Lucy’s garden - you had to be a special sort of wrong. 

There’s people who’d say that about selling drugs, she’d said, picking her words carefully in this rare opportunity of candour around a family member who’d usually ruffle her hair and stuff a fifty pound note in her hand in lieu of proper conversation. 

Yeah. We ain’t saints, Pol. But when there’s a degree of choice involved, it’s a business transaction. A man wants to stick something in his arm, or up his nose, or wherever the fuck else - that’s his decision. Finn’s eyes darkened, and he lit another cigarette in the same motion as flicking the butt from the last one away. But taking someone, and shoving them in a room with twenty others, with one mattress to share - and telling them they’re there until they can pay off a debt that’ll take their whole life to settle - that’s… s’not natural. 

So why, despite the family’s shared distaste for human trafficking, was her Aunt Caro trying to take over a Chinese triad who specialised in it? Lucy hadn’t annotated these notes. The absence of her commentary was as eerie as the cold silence that had stolen into the room at Polly’s discovery. 

Aunt Caro had always been an odd duck. Her father’s siblings were as alike as chalk and cheese, but she’d never doubted that they loved her, even if they’d shown it in different, slightly awkward and clumsy ways. 

For Polly’s eighth birthday, Carolyn had taken her out of school and taken her to a shopping village in Bicester that she’d had closed, just for Polly and her. They’d wandered up and down the shops, with the assistants goggling at her as they wrapped up anything she’d pointed at. At first, it had been awkward, with Polly pointing at one or two items, and nodding shy thanks at the assistants who bagged it for her and handed it to the beefy driver to stuff in the tinted van. But Caro had egged her on, encouraging her, baiting her, stuffing her full of sugar until Polly was running down the centre street - darting into stores and pointing at ridiculous things in fits of sugared giggles until she’d reached the end of the street and threw up in the water fountain at the entrance. 

When they’d delivered Polly, pale and trembly from the sugar crash, wrapped up in Caro’s coat, on Lucy’s doorstep at gone midnight, Lucy hadn’t even given Polly a second glance as she’d marched up to her sister and belted her across the face. It was such an odd sight, Polly thought she was dreaming, Her two aunts, one barefoot in a silk dressing gown and a mighty fury, the other impeccably suited and with a face like a kicked puppy, gazing down at Polly in her dizzy, exhausted haze. She’d blinked, and then she’d been in Lucy’s arms, cradled on her hip like a baby, and then tucked up in bed with a stuffed dog and a bowl for any residual stomach contents. 

They’d never spoken of that excursion again, but each subsequent birthday, Carolyn had sent one present and a neat little handwritten card, always exotic; always unusual from wherever she was in the world, but they’d never gone off, just the two of them, again. 

It was thus a rare treat, albeit a slightly tentative one, for Carolyn to be in Lucy’s office, smiling down at her niece. 

‘I hear you had a productive day,’ she said, and Polly could hear the note of pride that she was failing to hide. 

‘Yea,’ Polly sighed. ‘But I’ve pissed Lucy off proper.’ 

Caro pulled out the chair opposite Polly, and turned over the file that Polly had been reading earlier. 

‘It’s not easy for her,’ Caro murmured softly, with enough far-awayness that Polly sensed that part of Lucy’s pissed-ness might not have been completely her fault. 

‘Be easier for her if she just accepted that I’m never going to be right in any of those schools,’ Polly muttered, fiddling with a weighty black pen, and doodling long inky scars up her bare arm. 

‘You know why though, right?’ Caro asked, intently. ‘Why she sends you to all those schools?’

‘Cause she’s obsessed about me growin’ up normal.’ 

‘That’s not the whole picture though, is it?’ Caro’s voice was different now, and Polly looked up to meet her eyes. It was uncanny - how alike she and Lucy looked, and how different they were underneath it. 

‘Isn’it?’ 

Caro swallowed, and sat back slightly. It was weird - seeing her so unsure of herself. Caro was in Lucy’s patch, trying hard not to trample on her growing vegetables, and the uncertainty in her voice didn’t suit her. 

‘Pol… growing up for us… it was different.’ 

‘Different how?’ 

Caro’s mouth moved in words she couldn’t speak aloud, and then bit down. ‘My old man - he was firm on the party line. You were born a Shelby, you were a Shelby for good. There wasn’t any point in dreaming up anything different - this was your lot.’

‘So you didn’t go to school?’ 

‘Oh we went for long enough, but no-one gave a toss about anything. Your dad, he was smart as a whip from the day he wandered out of our mother, so school didn’t do much for him except teach him how to be bored. And I was too busy competing with him to care much about it.’ 

‘Lucy liked it though.’ 

‘Lucy did. And Lucy wanted more than to be a Shelby, but that wasn’t an option for her.’

‘But she went to university, and then did her law stuff.’ 

‘Her law stuff, yes. But she didn’t leave the company - she wasn’t allowed.’

‘Yes she did - she said she went to work in Mayfair. The company hasn’t even got an office there.’ 

Caro considered her niece for a second, those bright, defiant eyes triumphed in having picked apart Caro’s story. ‘Yes, she went to work for a different company,’ Caro said, slowly, deliberately, ‘but then our father bought the firm.’ 

‘Why?’ 

Caro swallowed, remembering the bitter screaming match, and the more heartbreaking look of resignation on Lucy’s face when she realised the final truth of the matter. 

‘Because we weren’t allowed to leave. Even if we tried, he’d pull us back, one way or another.’ 

Caro watched this revelation flicker over Polly’s face, and get trapped in the delicate little frown line between her eyebrows, as if stuck, and needing a little help to unpeel itself. 

‘So I need to go to school because Lucy wants me to leave?’ 

‘No,’ Caro said, softly. ‘Lucy wants you to have the option to leave, if you wanted to.’ 

‘What if I want to stay?’ 

‘Then you can make that decision,’ Caro began, and then caveated. ‘-when you’re old enough to make it.’ 

‘But won’t Lucy be cross if I don’t? If she spent all that money for nothin’?’ 

‘Given your little stunt this morning, it’s not for nothing - it’s given you a healthy dose of creativity, which’ll send you a fair way here.’ Caro smiled, indulging in pride for just a second. ‘But the choice would be yours - that’s the important bit. A choice without an alternative isn’t a choice, it’s a formality.’

Polly frowned again, and Caro could practically see the puzzle pieces in that clever little mind trying to rearrange themselves into clarity. ‘If you want to come into the company when you’re older, then you can persuade your old man, and come in if you want to. But the important bit would be that you’re making the choice of your own volition. You’re not coming in because you don’t have the right schooling to make it on the outside. And then, if you decided to pack it in later, you could... start afresh if you wanted.’

‘Could I even do that?’ Polly asked, eyes as wide as Lucy’s cappuccino cups. 

‘Well, you couldn’t go off and write your memoirs, obviously...but if you wanted a quieter life then no-one would hold it against you. There’s always people wanting to come up, and plenty of houses tucked away with our names on.’ 

‘So Lucy wants me to go to school so that I can choose what I do?’ 

‘Yes, little bug. Choose, and choose freely. My old man is dead and gone, and his ideas about family loyalty with it. Lucy’s in the family now because she wants to be, but she could leave if she wanted to and Tommy and I would send her off with our love. She wouldn’t be any less of our sister, just because she wasn’t in the company any more.’ 

The sound of clearing throats stirred Polly from her revelations, and Caro from her softness. Lucy stood at the door, coat in hand. 

‘Home, my girl. I might even let you have dinner, despite your astonishing behaviour this morning.’ 

‘Night Pol,’ Caro called, casual as anything, despite the conversation they’d just had. ‘I’ll see you soon.’ She departed at such a clip, that it was only once she had disappeared around the corner that Polly had remembered her question about the triad. 

Lucy exchanged a look with Caro as she passed, but they said nothing. Polly waited until Caro’s heels had faded to silence before she looked up at her aunt. 

‘Why didn’t you leave? When you could?’  
‘What do you mean, when I could?’ 

‘When Grandfather died - you could have left.’ 

Lucy sighed, a deep racking sort that seemed to go all the way through her. 

‘Because I was too used to it. I was too far in. But I had you to look after, and that was enough, most days.’ 

‘But…’ 

‘Ah ah.’ Lucy held up a hand. ‘Not tonight. I’m too exhausted to think in a straight line, let alone examine my psyche right now. Do you want to go up and say goodnight to your father?’

Polly’s face shone like sunlight. ‘Is he here?’ she asked, breathlessly.

‘In his office,’ Lucy advised, but Polly was already past her, into a bounding run before she’d even reached the corridor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it’s short, but I’m quite happy with that for a lunch hour knockout. 
> 
> Also, if someone wants to hmu and teach me how to italicise, would be v.grateful.


	6. Codes

Tommy was stirred from his whisky by the faintest knock at the door. 

“In,” he ordered, expecting an assistant, and was pleasantly surprised by the dark head peering round at him. 

“Hello little bug,” he said, softly, and at once, that hard little shell broke, and she seemed to become smaller - younger. 

“Hi.” She seemed almost tentative, and Tommy suddenly remembered that she was in Lucy’s disgrace, and he tried to school his features into a stern frown.

“I hear that you’ve another notch on your bookbag.” 

“Sorry.”

“It’s not me you’re to apologise to,” Tommy said, in a quiet, measured tone. 

“I know,” Polly said, taking a seat opposite, “an’ I didn’t do it to upset her.” 

“You set off an indoor firework inside a girl’s PE bag, and spiked it with sour yogurt. What did -”

“No, I meant to upset Georgia Kendrick. I didn’t mean to upset Lucy.”  
“Did you think she’d be pleased?” 

“No,” Polly admitted quietly. “I didn’t really think about her at all.”

Tommy sat back, interlacing his fingers across his stomach. “I don’t need to tell you how grateful I am to her, and I’d think you’d know how grateful you ought to be to her.” 

“I know.” 

“She’s finding you a new school tomorrow. For both of our sakes, and especially for Lucy...”

“I know.” 

“Do you?” Tommy said, the hardness in his voice was no longer contrived. “Because we had this conversation last time.” 

Polly looked up at him, shamefaced and mute.

“Didn’t we?” 

She nodded, twisting the fabric of another wasted school skirt between her fingers.Tommy sat forward, right into her direct gaze. Despite the intensity of his look, she didn’t flinch, but something was bubbling under the surface. 

“Pol - “

“Aunt Caro’s taking over a triad,” Polly burst. Her father looked stunned for a second, searching her face for some clarity. 

“How do you…”

“I do. I read it, and I heard it, and I thought we didn’t do slaving people because it’s...it’s unhuman.” 

“Lucy!” It was such an even-voiced bellow that it shocked Polly back into her chair and into silence. 

It took a moment for Lucy to arrive, and Polly watched the slight flicker in her father’s throat as the blood vessel caught around his tensed jaw. 

“You yowled.” 

“How does she know about Carolyn?”   
“She reads my notes,” Lucy answered calmly, confirming Polly’s suspicions. 

“Why?”

“Because she cannot be blind to the work that goes on around her.”

Tommy opened his mouth, and then closed it. Polly decided to chance it.

“So it’s true? We are going to be...traffic people?”

“No.” Lucy answered, with a finality that wasn’t quite transparent. “We aren’t. But we are going to be doing something different, and soon.” 

“Different how?” 

“I don’t know yet,” Lucy answered, looking pointedly at Polly’s father. “But it’ll be in the files in my locked drawer as always when I’m ready for you to know. Which code was it this time?”

“Birmingham postcode of the first Shelby office,” Polly answered, proudly. 

Lucy whistled, and cracked a rare smile. “Very good.” 

Tommy looked between his sister and his daughter, trying to hide the unmanly bewilderness. 

“Will you come for dinner?” Polly asked, breaking the stalemate. Lucy offered a resigned nod as permission, and Tommy looked down at his daughter. 

“On one condition -” he ordered, holding up a finger, “-that when you are driven to your new school on Monday, you will not put a toe one millimetre out of line.”

“Promise,” Polly whispered, lying through her teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I promise this is the last setting the scene - we have drama and proper action coming in the next chapter. 
> 
> I just really wanted to get Polly into a room with Tommy. 
> 
> For a bit of context, I wrote this a couple of years ago - c. 2015, and forgot about it in a dusty old Google doc. All the characters had different names, but the premise was the same, even long before I started watching the series. Some of the chapters will be dusted off and reworked/edited, others like this one will be completely new. 
> 
> It's also odd, going back and rewriting it as I've changed all of the names, so if you find a stray reference to 'Posy' - this was Polly's original name.


	7. Dreaming

The air was bitterly cold as Polly strolled out of the tower, gaze caught by the lights of the low flying aircraft inbound to London City Airport overhead as her breath cooled to spiralling puffs. Dragon’s breath, she thought, caught by the memory of winter mornings in the snow of Cumbria, hand in hand with….

It had caught her like a gut punch, the one and only time she’d tried a cigarette - making it halfway through without a cough before the old bat had caught her - dragging up Lucy and Polly for a good telling off about the dangers of smoking, and worse, smoking in the Lycee’s uniform. Dragon’s breath, now with teeth.   
So distracted was Polly by snowy memories, and cigarettes, that she didn’t notice the black shape roar around the corner, advancing on the doors to the building at speed. Polly didn’t notice it at all until something hit her from behind, knocking the breath from her and sending a sharp, shooting shock of agony through her knee as the weight threw her to the floor and landed heavily on top of her. Polly’s breaths came in short, pained gasps, her face pressed against the jagged stones of the freezing pavement, trapped under the weight of arms that wrapped around her head, pressing her against a breast that smelled like Lucy.

“Wh-” Polly managed, all air squeezed from her lungs beneath Lucy’s body. 

“Stay down,” Lucy’s voice was hoarse, and the arms tightened until Polly could feel her own heartbeat in her temples and was beginning to see stars in front of her eyelids. Louds pops, somewhere above - as if the stars were bursting. Polly wriggled slightly, trying to blink her vision clear, when the weight twitched above her in a short, pained groan. There were hands on them now, on Polly’s arm and leg, dragging her up even as his fingers clawed onto Lucy’s coat, griping, slipping at the fabric as the weight shifted and Polly could gulp in great gasps of the cool fresh air. The hands dragged her upwards, scooping her underarms as her leg gave way - dragging her away from Lucy, even as she writhed and kicked and screamed. 

‘Pol - Pol!’ Tommy was there - directly in her narrowed field of vision, with a hand on her chin, forcing it upwards to look him square in the eye. ‘It’s alright.’ 

Polly blinked as the sound of her screaming stilled - and realised that he was holding her jaw closed. 

‘Take deep breaths,’ he murmured, but Polly’s gaze dropped to his right hand - and the gun cradled in the crook between thumb and forefinger, gloved finger still resting on the trigger guard. She’d not seen a real gun before - not up close, and certainly not in her father’s hand. The sight of it seemed to swell in her vision, distorted and pulsing until it was all she could see. 

She was being lowered to the floor - someone was touching her leg, and when something grazed her knee, she howled in pain. Something cold trickled down her shin, and something tight was bound around her knee until the sharp stabs of pain had faded to a dull ache. 

‘Lucy,’ Polly murmured, but a hand on her shoulder kept her down, pinning her to the floor even as the foyer filled with the sound of running feet. The lights above flared brighter, the noises intensified, and Polly’s head swam. The shapes around her blurred, and then focused, like a camera lens trying to pick out a distant object amidst chaos…

It shocked into sharp relief as the shapes moved, and Polly saw the body laid out, with the people-shapes crouched above it. They were shouting, their mouths moving, but it was as though Polly was underwater... sounds, but nonsensical as more shapes clustered, then cleared, and Polly could see the body in sharp relief, trailing up the bare feet, legs, dark coat ripped open for hands to press in - on - inside…

There was red on the hands - staining the white cuffs, and the forearms as they pushed into the coat even harder, as though they were reaching through to the floor beneath. 

Polly looked away, trailing up the body to the long neck, head turned away from Polly and cradled in hands that looked like her father’s. The gun was gone now, but the gloves...

The hair had come loose from the clip. Long, trailing hair, dragging on the shining floor and trailing dark streaks beneath, stretching out forever. 

Polly felt the howl rip from her throat, and the exertion of it made her head spin until she could see nothing but bursts of light as the hands lifted her again, and then deposited her again. 

“Lucy,” Polly sobbed, and a hand reached up through her hair, cupping the base of her neck and lifting her until she was looking into a face that was painfully Lucy, but not. 

“She’s alright,” Carolyn murmured, but Polly could hear the lie in Caro’s throat. “They’ve got her.” 

Polly opened her mouth to say something else, but it was as though a string had been cut, severing her from voice, even the energy to keep her eyes open. She let herself be pressed into Caro’s chest, and rocked as Polly drifted...dreaming of another woman…lying asleep on the floor....


	8. Panic

Caro kept one wary eye on her brother as he paced, in the way that one might keep a wary eye on a tiger in the same small cage. He’d been barely comprehensible in his rage as he’d ordered them into battle and they’d scuttled at his command as soldiers. It was fate, Caro decided, or luck, or probably fucking good intel on the part of their assailant that they’d struck the office on a day when most of the family had been in attendance. It may even have been somewhat damaging to the company had they not mistimed their attack - opening fire when only Polly was outside and exposed, instead of more members of the family. Perhaps they’d expected Tommy to immediately follow her out, instead of Lucy. 

Frankie had made it to the doors first. The boy might be barely clawing nineteen, but he had a turn of speed on him that was damn impressive, and he put two clear shots through the rear window as the car made a break for it, plunging off the ramp and onto the main road. He’d not broken stride, not waited for orders from above as he turned and made for the nearest Shelby vehicle, wrenching open the passenger door as the driver hit the accelerator to give chase. Two more vehicles had formed the convoy as they’d disappeared into the night. 

Inside the foyer, the family had clustered in Tommy’s command centre. Lucy’s blood was in rivulets on the marble floor, and Polly was screaming blue murder. Finn had gone to Polly, but it wasn’t until Tommy tore himself away from his commands to the rest of the family that she quieted for a few moments. 

The medics from the fourth floor mini field hospital had come running out of the lift, equipment bags and trolley in tow, and Caro had caught the wide eyes of the junior doctor at the chaos before him. Perhaps he’d thought he’d accepted a quiet life when he’d taken this post, basking in his luck at the heady payslip and only expected to patch up the odd boxing injury, or write out Kenneth’s warfarin prescription. It was the same look on the receptionist’s face, as she stared in horror at her bosses, dressed like respectable City financiers, but now accessorising with Glock, Sig, vintage Browning, and even Finn’s Uzi. They’d have to learn - this was the Shelby’s world, and this was the price of their blood money payslip. 

It wasn’t until Polly started to scream again that Caro was roused from her stupor. Tommy was barking orders, Michael was flying down the stairs three at a time with two armed bodyguards in tow, straightening his tie and smoothing his hair as he climbed into the waiting Mercedes. He was en route for damage control in Westminster. He might be a sleazy little fucker, but his slimy mouth could talk them out of anything. Where Michael had run down, Johnny had run up, with men in tow, shouting Tommy’s orders down the line to their duty bent copper at the Yard. Above them, Caro could faintly hear the sound of helicopter blades beginning to rotate. Johnny could do chaos, and do it well. Caro was frozen by it. She was a strategist, a thinker, who could win a chess game before it had started, but chaos she could not do. Lucy could think on her feet, Luc... Tommy met her eyes, and she saw the recognition blossom, even as his mouth continued the orders. Without breaking breath, he’d pointed at his daughter and Caro had gone to her, barely biting down on her own words of panic as Polly spotted Lucy’s body, laid out on the floor, and Patrick pressing down hard on her rapidly exsanguinating wounds, and had let out a ripping scream that echoed around the room and shocked them all into momentary silence as their own blood ran cold at the memory it stirred in all of them.  
They’d wound up on the fourth floor, Caro and Tommy. Tommy had wanted to go out after Frankie, but Caro had convinced him to stay and wait it out. Patrick ran messages through to them from the command centre set up on the top floor, and Tommy listened to each as impassionately as the last. 

Polly had a concussion and a cracked kneecap. She’d stayed conscious for long enough to vomit down the front of Caro’s coat, and then passed out, limp in Caro’s arms and rasping for breaths when the hospital staff had reached them, lifting her unresisting body onto the trolley, suctioning her vomit to prevent aspiration, and rushing her up to the fourth floor. 

Lucy’s wounds had been critical. She’d taken no less than five shots. Two had skimmed, and were superficial. One had shattered her scapula, but exited cleanly, one had passed through her leg, but the last had found its target with horrifying accuracy. It had missed the coronary artery by millimetres, making a vile mess of her right lung to reach it, and lodged itself just above her heart. She’d been in surgery for six hours, and counting, and none of the medical staff had yet emerged.

The BMW hadn’t gotten far. The beefy engine and impressive control of the driver were ultimately no match for the Shelby’s unfettered access to London’s ANPR system. He’d not made it as far as the bridge when he was forced down a camera-blind side street by two Range Rovers, and pinned in by a third. 

The passenger, to his ballsy credit, had come out shooting, and had been dispatched by Frankie’s preferred Sig without much further fuss. The driver and other passenger were dragged from the car without resistance, and were driven to the docks for a chat. 

The driver had expired just before two in the morning without breaking, but the other passenger had broken in the face of the jumper cables and had sung like a canary. A quick background check verification had confirmed his story. 

The Grays had escalated. They’d just started a fucking war.


	9. Ghosts

“You’re absolutely certain?” 

Michael’s voice echoed in the charged conference room, tinny and distorted in the conference speaker, and the occupants let it hang there as they considered it. 

Johnny answered first, through gritted teeth. “The lad gave them up. We checked his inbound and outbound calls, and linked two to a known Gray affiliate. The vehicle was bought three days ago by an SPV registered in Newcastle, off of a dealer who’s known to run stolen parts into the Baltic on Gray ships.”  
“That’s conjecture. It’s not proof.” Michael retorted. 

“I’m not fuckin’ finished.” Johnny snarled. “I sent the weapon they used on Lucy to our boy in Stepney, and he ran the ballistics. It’s the same gun that killed Charlotte.”

This information had, thus far, not been shared with the rest of them. They’d believed Johnny on the merit of his word, because Johnny’s word was never wrong. This was quite the other, and the room sat in stunned silence. 

“So unless anybody here is still clinging on to coincidence, or fucking conjecture, or circumstantial or whatever Lucy would come out with were she not bleeding to fuckin’ death downstairs, there you have it. It’s quite the statement, given how thorough Georgie and Patrick were in hunting down that gun when… last time. Did you not say, Michael,” he spat, “when we were up here with Charlotte’s body laid out at the old house, that there was no way that the gun was still in the country?”

At the other end of the line there was silence, interspersed with the sound of traffic as Michael’s car made its way through the streets back to base. 

“We can’t let this stand until morning. We could burn down Remy Square.” George was not known for level-headedness, and for a moment it looked as though Kenneth was about to put him through the window. 

“We’re supposed to be taking on the Red Hand.” Patrick remarked. “Now we’re starting on the Gray’s in the other bastard direction. Was there not a large war lost when someone was stupid enough to do that?” 

“Don’t wax lyrical Paddy, it doesn’t suit you.” Patrick’s sister, Molly had made no interjection in the evening up to that point, but she leaned across the desk to shut off the conference speaker, severing Michael’s contact from the room and looked around at the remaining representatives. “The Gray’s have us on the backfoot. You’re all boxers, you know you’d be punching off balance if we staged anything tonight, particularly by one of us.”

“Send in Frankie’s boys. Cause some ruckus, and burn their car shipments in the fray.” George suggested, apparently unwilling to give up his pyromancing. 

“Or,” Molly said, with a pointed pause, “We wait. We strategise, and we lash out only when we are certain that it’s a critical hit. Paddy’s right, we won’t win a war.” 

“You’re a banker,” Finn scoffed. “What do you know about fighting? Stay in your lane, girl.” 

“Kept your shoes well out of the shit all your life, Molls,” Johnny agreed with a sneer. “But the second Caro’s out of the loop, you go barrelling in to take charge.” 

“I’m not taking charge. I’m taking the voice of reason in a room of fucking idiots.” Molly’s venom dripped off her tongue as she looked around the room, daring any of said idiots to open their mouths. “They prepared this. They knew we were all here tonight. They uncached a weapon with history to make a point. They took out Lucy fucking Shelby, and damn near took out Tommy fucking Shelby’s daughter. They expect us to react, and they want to lure us out for the next hit. It’s the same play I make on the market every single fuckin’ day with your dirty cash, so yes, Finn, this is my lane, and I’ll bloody well stay in it.”

“We can’t do nothing. It makes us look weak.” Finn’s voice was more subdued, but resistant all the same. 

“No, we can’t.” Like a ghost, the shadow at the doorway seemed to lower the temperature by a manner of degrees. Tommy’s eyes were shadowed by something more than the dimmed lights, and he seemed more ghoul than man. “Henry Gray is a dead man. Make it happen.”


End file.
